


Academic

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bookstores, Boys Kissing, Dating, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Inline with canon, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-05 19:12:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12195945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "'I wouldn’t hesitate to ditch you if I had a date,' Sirius says at once. His lashes dip, his gaze flickers to Remus for just a moment before it’s gone again, too fast for Peter to notice but more than enough to register for Remus himself." James leaves the other three Marauders to their own devices for a romantic Hogsmeade trip, and Sirius follows his example.





	Academic

“I can’t believe James just ditched us like that,” Peter says for what Remus believes to be the twelfth time since they stepped past the front gates of Hogwarts. “How much fun can it be to go on a  _date_  instead of hanging out with your best mates?”

“Oh, certainly,” Sirius agrees, speaking in the lofty tone that always manages to convey more sarcasm than Remus’s own deadpan ever could. “He ought to just tell Lily off, right? ‘Sorry love, I’ve got to go hang out with the boys all weekend, just like I do every night of every other day, you know how it is.’” Sirius scoffs a laugh and tosses his hair back, lifting his chin into the regal tilt that brings out the straight line of his nose and the rich tan of his skin into something haughty and overbearing as Sirius himself so rarely is. “How could he possibly decide to spend time with a romantic interest instead of with us?”

“Well, I mean,” Peter says, backtracking from his initial irritation with alacrity. “Sure, if we  _all_  had dates to go on, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.”

“I wouldn’t hesitate to ditch you if I did,” Sirius says at once. “Prongs too, if he were here.” His lashes dip, his gaze flickers to Remus for just a moment before it’s gone again, too fast for Peter to notice but more than enough to register on Remus’s attention. “In the first flush of love? Friendship be damned.”

“That’s not fair,” Peter protests, the soft pout of his mouth drawing down as he frowns up at Sirius. “We’re there all the time, you shouldn’t just leave like that.”

“That’s exactly why I could,” Sirius says easily. “I can count on you all to forgive me. God only knows what James would have to do to win Lily’s affection back. You don’t want a repeat of the last five years, do you?” He reaches out to sling his arm around Peter’s neck before the other has a chance to formulate an answer, leaning in conspiratorially as he lifts his other arm out before them to gesture up towards the clear blue of the sky overhead. “Just imagine it. The girl of your dreams, right?”

Peter takes a breath, deep like he’s drawing the shape of Sirius’s words into him to flesh out his own reality. “Yeah,” he says. “I’d do anything for someone like that.”

“Right,” Sirius says. “Slender legs, narrow waist, nice hair?”

“Like gold,” Peter sighs. “In waves down her back.”

“Sure,” Sirius says. “Blondes aren’t my type so much--” as his gaze flickers back to Remus’s steady attention, as his focus catches against the dusty brown of the other’s hair falling around his shoulders, “--but whatever you’re into, mate.”

“And curvy,” Peter says, apparently so lost in his imagination that he doesn’t notice the retreat Sirius is staging from this particular conversation. He lifts his hands to gesture a vague and improbable hourglass figure in the air before him. “With breasts like--”

“Yes,” Sirius says, loudly enough to cut Peter off mid-sentence as he straightens and claps a hand against the other’s shoulder. “Whatever your tastes run to, exactly.” He sounds a little edgy, his conversational dodge a little too overt; it’s enough for even Peter to notice, as he looks up to frown at Sirius and lets his hands drop to his sides.

“Fine then,” he snaps, approaching the edge of petulance as he crosses his arms. “What do  _your_  tastes run to, then?”

Sirius does not stumble, quite. His feet do stall for a moment, his footing hesitates; but he makes up for it at once with an extra-long stride forward, the recovery so quick Remus doesn’t think it would be noticeable to anyone not looking for it as intently as he is himself.

“Ah,” he says, and Remus ducks his head to flinch through the beginning of a smile sympathetic and amused at once at Sirius’s latest predicament. “Well. If you  _really_  want to know.” He clears his throat in an obvious attempt to buy himself more time to think; Remus keeps his head down, keeps his gaze fixed on the street in front of them rather than meeting Sirius’s gaze or offering him any help out of this particular difficulty. There’s a pause, presumably as Sirius attempts to catch the other’s eye; and then a huff of resignation as he gives it up as a lost cause.

“Fine,” he says. “I said blondes weren’t my type. Redheads neither, though of course I wish Prongs the best with his tempestuous mistress.”

“Brunettes, then,” Peter suggests; but Sirius whines rejection to this idea, huffing sound in the back of his throat in a range that calls to mind a puppy struggling to work a favorite toy free.

“Something between the two,” Sirius says. “Light brown, I think, so it looks coppery in some light and bronze in others, like well-worn leather. And soft, like silk that catches in the wind.”

Remus lifts a hand to push his hair behind his ear, feeling his face warm with self-consciousness; but Peter isn’t looking at him, and if Sirius is Remus doesn’t lift his head to see it. The other is still talking, however, continuing on with a distant, dreamy tone to the words, like he’s sketching poetry into the air with every flourish of his fingers. “Eyes like honey, the dark kind, and long lashes to go with them. Delicate hands with elegant fingers, especially when they hold a wand.” Remus has to bite his lip at that, not sure if he wants to protest or laugh at the suggestion; but Sirius doesn’t linger over it, for once, just carries on framing what feels to Remus like a point-by-point articulation of every detail of his body. “A soft mouth, too, the kind that makes you want to kiss it no matter whether it’s smiling or frowning or set on focus. And smart, brilliant enough to run circles around me if they wanted. That’s...that’s what I want most of all, I think.”

“Okay,” Peter says, sounding a little lost. “Is that it?”

“What?” Sirius lets his hand fall, turns his head to blink at Peter. “Is that  _it_?”

“That just sounds so  _ordinary_ ,” Peter complains. “I thought you’d want some hot supermodel girlfriend.” He ducks his head and hunches his shoulders. “You’re the only one of us who could manage it, anyway.”

“It’s not  _ordinary_ ,” Sirius says, sounding sincerely outraged at this dismissal. “What’s the problem with my ideal?”

“It’s not  _sexy_ ,” Peter insists. “What’s the point of having a fantasy if it’s not enough to get off to?”

“Oh it is,” Sirius says, in such a tone that Remus can feel it as if Sirius has pressed a fingertip to his spine and drawn right down the whole length of it. “It’s  _very_  sexy. Haven’t you ever heard of the hot librarian fantasy?”

“Well, yeah,” Peter says, still sounding deeply skeptical. “That doesn’t sound like a librarian though, that sounds more like...a professor, or something.”

“Right,” Sirius says, with certainty. “A sexy professor. With glasses, maybe.” He pauses for a moment; Remus can almost see the image forming in the space above the other’s head, has to fight the urge to swish his wand to dispel Sirius’s imagination from coming into too much clarity. Finally Sirius sighs a long exhale, his tone dropping down to something like that moment of heat. “ _Definitely_  glasses.”

“Right,” Peter says, sounding more frustrated now than anything else. “You’re having me on.”

“Am not,” Sirius says. “It’s all teachers and extra study sessions for me from here on out, Wormtail.”

“Rubbish,” Peter scoffs. “You haven’t studied anything all year.”

“All the more reason to start now,” Sirius says, and cuts sharply in front of Peter and Remus to beeline for the first shop at the very outskirts of Hogsmeade, with dust clinging to the corners of the windows and the flutter of pages idly drifting inside. “I’ll see what supplementary textbooks I can find to get started right away.” And he’s gone, striding away without so much as glancing back at either of the other two. Remus and Peter are left to slow to a stop, both of them staring after Sirius as he pulls the door open with some measure of his usual excess enthusiasm and strides forward into the soft quiet of the shop. They’re both silent for a moment, gazing after their suddenly absent friend; and then Peter takes a breath, and heaves a sigh enough to slump his shoulders under his robes.

“That’s it then,” he says, sounding mournful and adrift. “He’s lost it.”

Remus clears his throat carefully. “Maybe he really is concerned about his grades.”

“As if he really needs to study,” Peter scoffs. “Besides, who comes to Hogsmeade and goes to a  _bookstore_?”

Remus lifts a hand to his mouth to cough a careful exhale. “Actually…” Peter lifts his head to stare at him and Remus grimaces apology. “Sorry. I do stop off here whenever I have the chance, though.”

Peter rolls his eyes dramatically. “Fine,” he says, and turns to stomp away. “I’ll go look at broomsticks like a sane person. Maybe James will get free of his  _date_  and meet me there.”

“I’ll fetch Sirius back and we’ll meet you there,” Remus calls after him, but Peter just raises a hand to wave this aside. Remus is left to frown after him, feeling a prickle of more than a little guilt at the back of his mind as he watches Peter leave; but anticipation wins out over sympathy, and as he turns to make his way to the bookstore he finds he leaves his guilt behind him with every step.

The shop is quiet when Remus steps inside, absent the usual chatter and noise that comes with the other Hogsmeade establishments. This one is filled instead with the rustle of pages, the sound of dozens of books settling themselves into more comfort against their shelves, and very occasionally a muffled sneeze from one of the other occupants as the gold-illuminated dust hanging in the air gets the better of them. Remus pauses in the doorway and shuts his eyes to breathe the smell of the space, the peace of the moment, into his lungs; he can taste leather, can smell the tang of ink, can almost feel the separate particles of dust drifting over his skin and clinging to the fine hair against his arms like they’re coming home, as if he’s a very strangely shaped version of the books all around him. It’s a comforting thought, the sense of having a place to belong, of fitting into so much peace; and by the time Remus is opening his eyes again, there’s a smile curving at his lips he doesn’t have to reach for at all.

He moves forward without hesitating, without pausing to make sense of the framed signs at the end of each row declaring what’s within them. He doesn’t need to have a direction to follow; he can almost feel it in the air, as if the knowledge in the pages themselves is drawing him forward. He moves through the front of the shop, past the shelves of novels and the heavier weight of the standard-issue textbooks and towards the back, where the rarer information is stored, the less well-known or well-taught details captured between the heavy covers of beautiful bindings. He turns down the next-to-last of these, into an aisle with shelves that rise just to his eye level and that is empty of anyone but him, and he lifts a hand as he steps forward, brushing his fingertips against the texture of the book spines as he moves past them while his smile tugs harder against his lips in answer to the soft murmur of the books shifting under his touch.

“Fancy running into you here.”

Remus doesn’t turn right away. He doesn’t need to, when he knows the sound of that voice so well, when he was expecting this company from the moment he stepped aside from the main Hogsmeade path. He pauses in his forward motion, his fingers steadying and pressing against the spine of the book under his touch, and when he tips his head it’s only to glance over his shoulder, to more gesture to the act of acknowledgment than actually make it directly.

“Indeed,” he says, in the soft tone that the shop suggests for those within it. “This is your first time actually inside a bookshop, isn’t it?”

Sirius’s laugh is low, muffled down from its usual bright brilliance in consideration of the space around them; the sound tugs at the corner of Remus’s mouth, curls up at the corner of his lips in answer even before the other takes a scuffing step forward and closer to where Remus is standing in the middle of the aisle.

“I’ve been developing a taste for them over the last little while,” Sirius says. His head is ducked forward so his hair falls over his face; Remus can just see the shift of Sirius’s mouth as the other bites idly at his lip, as he reaches out to touch his fingers just against the dip of Remus’s waist. “You can find all kinds of treasure inside them if you look, turns out.”

“You can,” Remus agrees, letting his fingers slide against the spine of the book under his touch without pulling aside from the weight of Sirius’s hand fitting against his hip to pin his shirt in against the weight of his Muggle-style jeans. “Is there anything in particular you’re looking for?”

Sirius’s nose bumps the back of Remus’s head; when he huffs a breath the warm of it gusts against the fine strands of the other’s hair to blow them off the back of Remus’s neck. “Not anymore.”

Remus smiles and ducks his head forward to let Sirius press closer. “We really left Peter to his own devices this time.”

“I know,” Sirius says, not sounding particularly upset about this fact. “That’s Prongs’s fault. I’ll be sure to let him know.”

Remus snorts. “How dare he go out on a date and leave the rest of us to our own devices.”

“Indeed,” Sirius says. His hand at Remus’s hip is gentle, his hold tentative, like he’s not entirely sure he’s allowed to touch the other; it’s the same way Remus’s fingers are skimming against the line of the book under his touch, suggests the same kind of reverent appreciation in the way his palm slides over the other’s hip and his thumb works idly over the smooth of Remus’s belt. “He should know I’ve already laid claim to the Hogsmeade-date priority.”

“He likely thought his would be less disruptive,” Remus says. “Seeing as how your own removes half of the group instead of just a quarter of it.”

“Mm,” Sirius growls against the back of Remus’s neck, his fingers tightening for a moment. “Is that Arithmancy you’re speaking at me? You know how I love when you get all scholarly on me, Moony.”

Remus snorts in spite of himself. “Don’t be absurd,” he says, and turns around to face Sirius properly, dislodging the other from his investigation of the back of Remus’s neck in the process. “This is why Peter can never tell when you’re serious.”

“I’m always Sirius,” Sirius says, with such complete sincerity in his expression Remus doesn’t even want to hit him for the obvious pun. He contents himself with ruffling the other’s hair instead, roughly so he upsets the sleek dark of the strands, and Sirius submits to this with the flash of white teeth that always looks like a laugh even when the amusement goes unvoiced. It makes Remus smile too, in the unthinking way that is always so startlingly easy with Sirius around, and he’s still smiling when Sirius shakes his hair back from his face and lifts his hand to push it back into the natural elegance that comes so immediately to him. He looks like a model for a brief moment, as the sunlight catches motes of dust around him and glows affectionately against the darker tones of his skin and the sleek black of his hair; it’s as if he’s become the star that is his namesake, like he’s something impossibly distant, impossibly unreachable. And then his hand comes down, and his chin dips, and when he opens his eyes to blink at Remus all the highbred elegance in the lines of his features eases, the weight of his lineage fading away to nothing, and he’s just himself, just Padfoot, with soft happiness at his mouth and a devotion in his eyes Remus doesn’t think he could ever be tired of seeing.

“I  _am_  serious,” Sirius says, soft enough to grant the words sincerity even before his gaze skims over Remus’s face, dipping over the other’s features like he’s rereading some favorite novel, like he’s basking in the comfort of a much-beloved verse of poetry. “I really do love you, Moony.”

Remus’s lashes dip, his throat tenses; for a moment he can’t voice an answer at all, can’t do anything but catch his breath and blink against the ache of emotion at his eyes. He lifts his hand to touch Sirius’s hair, to run his fingers through the strands with far more care than he used the first time, and Sirius turns his head into the contact, his lashes falling and his chin tilting so he can nuzzle against the weight of Remus’s hand, can turn the high arch of his cheekbones in against the other’s palm like he’s begging for a caress. Remus smiles. “Even when I’m scholarly?”

Sirius hums without opening his eyes. “ _Especially_  then.”

“Well then,” Remus allows, and lets his hand fall so he can reach sideways for the textbook he was trailing over when Sirius found him. “Perhaps I ought to establish a lecture series for you to study from.”

“Yes,” Sirius says, grinning as he opens his eyes to meet Remus’s gaze before his focus dips down to the part of the other’s lips. “I’ll learn anything you want to teach me, Professor Moony.”

Remus’s mouth tightens, a smile tries to break free of his control. “Good,” he says, and lets the book go so he can reach for Sirius’s hair instead. “Let’s start with the basics.” And he tugs Sirius in and towards him, and lets the shadows of the books fluttering overhead disguise the fit of their lips against each other.


End file.
